


What the water sprites saw

by ineptshieldmaid



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Honeymoon, Married Couple, Outdoor Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 06:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineptshieldmaid/pseuds/ineptshieldmaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is said that if two lovers lie together by a brook such as this, their child will be beloved of the naiads and never die of drowning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What the water sprites saw

**Author's Note:**

  * For [somnolentblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/somnolentblue/gifts).



‘I love the smell of flowers in the dark,’ Anne said, straightening up and leaning into his side again. He noted the scent absently, too fascinated with the scent of her hair and the gentle curve of her waist under his hand - still tentative, even now, hesitant and proprietary all in one, as if all his good fortune might vanish if he dared become accustomed to it. ‘You get hold of their soul then,’ Anne added, her nose still in the bouquet.

 _And I you_ , Gilbert thought, closing his eyes a moment. Her voice, the swish of the wind in the trees, the gurgling brook at their feet, all mingled together in one harmony, and if his heart had a chorus this was it - Anne, and the night that sang all around her.

How could he ask her to go inside, from here? Fred’s advice - ‘you ask her if she’d like to go upstairs first, you know, and it all works out alright from there’ - suddenly seemed out of place: they shouldn’t be apart, not on this night, not for a minute. Gilbert hadn’t Anne’s propensity for flights of fancy, but Captain Jim’s tale had stirred something in him too, and he knew, as sure as he knew his catechism, that John Selwyn had not sent his sea-wearied bride upstairs alone, and nor would he.

‘I’m so glad,’ Anne said, tipping her face up to be kissed, ‘that we are not the first who have kept bridal tryst here!’

For an addled moment, between kisses on her lips and brow and neck, Gilbert was sure she meant right _here_ , in the garden by the brook, among Persis Leigh’s flower-beds; and for that addled moment, no other alternative seemed possible (he rested his hand on her bodice, amid some delicate feminine mess of lace, just to feel the steady rhythm of her heart) or at all appropriate. Then Anne stepped away from him, turning toward the open door and the firelight beyond. She held out a hand to him,

‘Let’s go home,’ she said, and he did.

* * *

Gilbert never told Anne about that moment, in the garden, where he’d thought - well. It wasn’t exactly that he thought Anne would _mind_ ; nor was it that he thought she’d endorse his notion too heartily, although of course she would. Rather, in the hesitation and the eager sweetness that they found together, in the house where John Selwyn had brought Persis Leigh to her bridebed and where Mr and Mrs Ned Russell had shared happy years of marriage, he had no regrets - and he would not have given Anne the idea he held any, not for all the world.

If they lingered in the garden o’nights, and he kissed her sweetly in the shadows, as no man has a right to do who has a house and a well-appointed bedroom of his own in which to do so, well, it must surely be the prerogative of the newlywed bridegroom. There was delight enough and a world to discover, within the sweet confines of the bridal chamber, without a man’s mind straying elsewhere.

Anne being Anne, Gilbert was not exactly surprised when she first said to him, as they sat entwined on the sweet lover’s bench by the brook, ‘Surely, Gilbert, if two lovers lie together by a stream such as this, their child will be the friend of the naiads and the water-sprites, and never die by drowning.’

Gilbert kissed her, and laughed, and kissed her again. He rested his hand on the slow-growing roundness of her belly - and kissed her again - and thought, for a moment, of all the dangers which might befall such a small and dearly treasured life. Anne simply must accept some woman to help about the house, he thought, again: he couldn’t forgive himself if anything should happen to her during one of his absences.

‘Come inside,’ he said, hands lingering at her waist. ‘Come inside, Queen Anne: we’ve an open hearth, and perhaps our child -’ his heart sang at the words ‘- surely our child needs protection from housefires as much as from drowning.’

* * *

_The schoolmaster’s bride - she had even begun to think of herself in those terms - loved best the little corner of her garden by the brook. Here she lingered in the summer evenings, and when school was out of session John lingered with her. Persis sat on the grass, her skirts drawn up about her, sometimes sewing, sometimes dreaming, and John lay stretched headlong at her feet. Usually he had a book with him, but in that first year, more often than not it lay abandoned, and the schoolmaster with all his book-learning turned to memorising every expression on the face of his beloved new bride._

_One otherwise unremarkable evening - and this she would remember, even many years later when she was a widow in Carmody: that the evening was unremarkable, and utterly perfect at the same time - she said idly, ‘We really must get a garden bench by the brook here.’ And John knelt up beside her and kissed her and protested ‘But right now it’s so easy to do_ this _,’ laying her back down into the grass. She looked up at him as the last light of the sun fell radiant on his face, and her heart ached with love for him and ached with all the time and grief and waiting she had endured not so long ago. John peeled back her blouse and kissed her inch by inch, and the eyes of the schoolmaster’s bride filled with tears as he murmured words of love against her skin, over and over again._

  


* * *

Little Joyce lay in the ground over the harbour, and Gilbert feared Anne might never be the same woman again. He feared _he_ might never be the same husband again - he might never touch her without fearing the loss (of her, of them both), might never step over his own threshold without thinking _we ought to have been so happy_.

He was a doctor, of course, and he knew the odds. He knew the dangers, and, more importantly, he knew the probability of future happiness beyond. Yet the fears would keep rising up in him, all probability notwithstanding.

Susan was a blessing and a curse in that time. A blessing, for she kept ‘Mrs Doctor Dear’ company, and she kept the doctor himself company. The grief between himself and Anne was sharp-edged and all-consuming, at least at first, and Susan’s busy presence grated against it, but spared them just a little. Yet he found himself thinking, after the Green Gables folk had gone and Anne grown stronger, that she might have been right - that they had lost something, some precious quality of being alone together, and although it was worth much, to him, to know Anne was well cared for, the price was a little higher than he’d expected.

Even Susan could not long argue that ‘Mrs Doctor Dear’s health would not stand up to an evening’s walk along the shore - not when Doctor Dave had pronounced her hale and well, and Gilbert was beside her all the while. The fading light danced in her eyes again, for even such loss as this could not keep his Anne from laughing long, and her step was light once more. Gilbert put a hand out to her as they came back into their own garden - the house was lit up, and no doubt hot tea awaited them. ‘A few minutes more,’ he said, drawing her down onto the little bench. ‘I want to keep you to myself for a few minutes yet.’

She turned her face away, although she leaned still into his side. ‘Gilbert, I...’ Everything lay between them, and they could hardly pick up the threads of their honeymoon again from here. He laid a gentle hand on her knee.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Don’t apologise. I know.’

‘No,’ she shook her head, and turned to kiss him - hard, and deeper than he would have dared himself. ‘No, I’m sorry. For me.’ She clasped one hand to her chest. ‘For myself. But I...’

Gilbert had no comfort to offer her but to kiss her. That he did, then and many times more in the time that followed, until eventually it was enough.

* * *

Little Jem was sleeping soundly in his cradle, under the watchful eye of Susan, and Mr and Mrs Doctor Dear (the ‘dear’ had, Gilbert sadly conceded, become part of the title) took a turn about the twilit garden. Not for the last time, no - that was still some days away now. But the knowledge of parting hung over them, and for once, Gilbert gave himself over to Anne’s nostalgia and her dedication to the place. It had seen such joy and sadness, their little house, before they ever crossed its threshold, but it might also have been built especially to house theirs.

The birches stood arm-in-arm, ghostly white protectors of their garden of dreams. Anne, whose arms in the moonlight were as pale as any birch or ghost, but who was warm and live and well-beloved in his embrace, wound her arms around his neck and tugged him down to be kissed.

‘I don’t believe I ever _have_ danced naked with the birch trees,’ she said, a little wistfully, ‘but I suppose the mistress of Ingleside oughtn’t to do anything so scandalous.’

Gilbert chuckled, winding strands of her hair around his fingers. ‘I think that would give good Susan conniptions, and then I should have to tend to her,’ he reasoned. ‘And I’d much rather be out here with you.’ He settled her onto the garden bench as he had so often before, took her face in his hands and kissed her as he had so often before. He knew her better now, though - and knew better the mysteries of female dress, too. Anne’s breath caught in her throat when she realised his scheme, that it was actually quite simple to lift a skirt here, and he knew where to place his hand ( _there_ ).

‘Do you call this decorous?’ she said, breathless, into his shoulder.

‘No,’ Gilbert said, tightening his other arm around her waist. ‘I call it less likely to be seen from the nursery window.’


End file.
